Halo Infinite - Review

This is a review of the console version of Halo Infinite Xbox X Series. The game also came out for Xbox One and Windows PCs. It's not uncommon for publishers to remove numbers from the titles of long-lived game series and reset the storyline a bit to make it easier for into it for new players, but... here the lack of a number means nothing because Halo Infinite continues the story of Halo 5 Guardians and alludes to many of the previous installments. In fact, the thing is even a little confusing for those familiar with the series, because it doesn't start its story where the fifth one left off. Here we return to the Master Chief as he fights his enemies on ship, he gets a beating from a monkey - for calling the librarian a monkey - and is thrown into space. Where he falls, because that's what happens in space - you fall in space.

A few months pass, the hibernated Lord-Leader is rescued by the lone pilot of a small landing ship called the Pelican, and he gets right down to business... ...because he may not have showered in six months, but the fight can't wait. And so our Master finds himself on another ring world where humanity has lost a battle against a faction of aliens calling themselves the Exiles, recruits a new artificial intelligence on a replacement contract for Cortana. and uncovers the secrets of more ancient precursor installations. Oi, wait, didn't Halo 5 Guardians end with some sort of Cortana-related mess? Yes, it did. And Halo Infinite takes on that theme, but not right away because the game gradually reveals to us not only new events but also the events of the past, which is what happened immediately after the end of the previous installment of the series. Not this is a bad move, but it is additionally confusing. In my review of the fifth Halo, I said that the fifth has the syndrome midway through the trilogy and looks way too much like Halo 2. So does Infinite complete the trilogy? Is It Like Halo 3? Not really, because the creators probably decided that they don't and this new installment feels more like the beginning of a new trilogy.

It concludes the threads of the previous installments and starts its own, but... it just starts. This is a bit unsatisfying because we neither get a decent finale to Halo 4 and 5 nor do we get a completely closed story in Halo Infinite... Because its story is so... infinite. That's not to say that the storyline in Halo 6 is bad, though. Very hits nostalgia very hard on many levels - which is what the developers have referred to Infinite as a spiritual reboot of the series. The new installment references the original trilogy is inspired by the look creatures from Halo 3 and the ecosystems from the first Halo, and on top of that, the main ape antagonist is one of the better written in the entire series, and his story ties into that of our Master Chief. Ehm, I mean Master Chief. Halo Infinite is also very raw. There are no big battles, a wide array of characters, and overly epic events. Master Chief, assisted by a new fake Cortana and a Pelican pilot anxious to escape home. Zeta Halo rings from the hands of the Outlaws, rescuing along the way a host of anonymous marines who join the fight as cannon fodder with no role in the plot. When you add in a handful of antagonists to this, we get a surprisingly intimate story. Which has its charm. A large role is also played here by how the interludes relationship between the protagonist and the accompanying artificial intelligence. Despite the huge disproportion in the size of the characters shots are prepared and conducted in such a way that we can see all the emotions being played out here - which was especially difficult with a guy with his face covered, playing which was especially difficult with the guy with his face obscured, acting only with his voice and body language and - with the close-ups on the close-ups of the holographic girl - we usually see only a snippet. And yet the relationship between the talkative artificial intelligence and the muttering, a pausing soldier is brilliantly handled. Unfortunately, the audiology is much worse. the most used method of building the plot background, because they are boring as hell. The antagonists were talking about the same information over and over again the same information, and the recordings of people bring events in such a residual and banal way that you can't listen to them. There was no idea what to do with these recordings. 343 Industries, the developers, describe Halo Infinite as a service game, and I think that's mainly in terms of the multiplayer, which I'll talk about later, but when I finished the campaign I got the feeling that... maybe they want to also develop the story with DLC?

A bit like Unfinished episodes of Half-Life, but in a more to modern standards in the form of expansions. After all, the game is called Infinite. It seems like this solution would make sense in the Game Pass ecosystem, but I have no idea if the developers have such plans. Nevertheless, the game ends as if they could have. Oh, it's also worth noting that the game has a cinematic localization. Looking at the multiplayer segment - it is decent, but I haven't been able to test how it works where it's most important, that is in the campaign, because the special, pre-release, review version of the game crashed after the intro if you didn't English subtitles. Fortunately, the premiere version no longer has this problem. By the way, because of the pre-release version, I have neither achievements nor saved game state, which I could use after the premiere. Strange charms of the reviewer's life. Let's take a look at the gameplay. The core gameplay is Halo in its pure form. Sure, we have the upgrades from later installments like running sprinting, object climbing and sliding, but the rest of the weapons and mechanics are classic. The protagonist jumps high, doesn't lose accuracy while moving, uses an arsenal of familiar weapons and a few new ones, and new ones, and cars and ATVs merrily jump on the dirt tracks. Still, the time to kill an enemy is quite long, because often you have to pierce his energy shield before start hitting soft ones, but - apart from literally a few bosses throughout the game - there are no bullet sponges, weapon and character levels, loot drops, and so on. There's just one, but sizable new feature. Halo Infinite has an open world. The open world in Halo Infinite is not overly large, and it's also being made available to us gradually. The map is covered with a set of beachheads that we can take over, and when we take them - like the vantage points in Assassin's Creed, a handful of the area there will be a handful of markers leading to optional commanders Enemies to kill, bases to smash, upgrade cores for gadgets Master Chiefs to collect or squads of Marines to rescue. Suffice it to say that I didn't collect all the finds, but I did all the side quests as I went through the game and it took me about 19 hours, so as you can see it's not an overly watered-down production - although of course at least twice as long as previous installments of the series.

Surely if I had left out optional open-world missions the game would have been shortened to 10-13 hours. I could also play on difficulty levels higher than normal and increase the game time significantly. But most of all, the open-world fits the concept of the game. Halo has always been based on micro-sandbox combat. It's not Call of Duty, which scripted us into a vehicle or behind a cannon to complete a targeting sequence. In Halo, there were always vehicles, guns, enemy fortifications, and a bunch of different guns to pick up and the player could choose what they're going to use. Will he rush quickly to the cannon and seize it? Or would he allow a soldier to join him in firing from the back of the semi-truck and steer the vehicle? Will he try to take over an enemy speedboat or will he blow it away? And Halo Infinite brings those same solutions to the scale of the open world. Collecting Spartan cores upgrades your gadgets, and by rescuing marines in need and killing enemy commanders we expand our arsenal and range of vehicles, which we can pick up at the beachheads, and we also increase the staff of these beachheads so that over time there will be more and more specialized allies with different weapons. Ally - You can lose him, he can die, but as long as he is alive - he will follow us like a dog following a man dressed in a sausage suit. So we can go with him get into the summoned car with the rifle, take the bigger team in a carriage with room for five passengers, and then even summon a tank or fly a kite and shoot enemies from the air. With time, we also unlock more guns, which can be pulled from chests at trailheads - including the occasional more powerful weapon variants that we gain by killing the leaders of the enemy faction. And there are no complicated systems here, it all works very simply. Zero weapon statistics, equipment management, pop-ups equipment management, events popping up from behind every tree random events like in Far Cry, and enemies don't resurface and enemies don't resurface every two minutes to clog up every square meter of terrain with something to grab your attention. It's wildly refreshing. Maybe it's just a shame that we can't give the accompanying marines any orders. Like, for example, ordering a soldier to take us by carriage to some destination on the map. In previous linear Halo games, the marines could be our drivers because we always knew where we were going, and here it's out of the question. We can drive guests around, but they'll never reach for the wheel themselves. And the game is so committed to the concept of giving the player a choice of how you want to play out a situation that at one point you're a long ravine full of enemies to cross, at the beginning we come across parked several vehicles to choose from and two trapped marines to free - in case we choose a means of transport requiring additional manpower. It's a bit like when at the threshold of a battlefield someone has set up a buffet of motorized murder. Choose your dish of doom. There's nothing wrong with this in principle, but this not-so-subtly served choice amused me. I will commend the few upgradeable gadgets for that. Not want to list them, so I'll just mention the anchor, which is very well done. In theory, it works classically - shoot at something and attract yourself to it - but while attracting we still have control of the Master Chief, and he has its inertia. So you can, for example, grab onto objects and by moving yourself sideways to avoid these walls and trees - catapulting you forward. Or grab the ground and jump just before the end of the attraction, to launch yourself into the air. As one senses this and reduces the cooldown of the anchor with upgrades - it works beautifully. You can also attract yourself to enemies and - after upgrades - and with improvements, you can electrocute them and use your jet fist in the mouth - which is a bit twisted and at times I felt like I was cheating by using it. Other gadgets are not so cool, but they have their uses and fit different play styles. The main problem with this open-world is that it is not best integrated with the rest of the game. There are long sequences of linear missions, then a bit of an open world, then a string of quests, and then another piece of open world, and the last quarter of the game completely forgets about the open world, only to make it available to us upon completion. Most open-world games place the story quests somewhere in the space of that world, but not Halo Infinite - here it feels Halo Infinite - here it feels like two completely separate entities, somewhat artificially stitched together. It's as if it was developed by two separate teams.

At a certain point, the small diversity of the world presented, which reminded me a bit of the cloned rooms in the oldest Halo. We have these North American forests and the harsh structures of the Exiles and Precursors - which strongly resemble the first series. And yet, later installments were more diverse in terms of climate - they had winter biomes, urban locations, or jungles. This is what makes Halo Infinity seem a bit cheap and unfinished... I mean, unfinished. But despite the weariness landscapes, I have to admit that I had a great time. It seems It seems that with this game 343 Industries finally a full sense of what the original Halo gameplay design was, and they've figured out how to make it even better with a surprisingly natural The open map is a surprisingly natural extension of the formula. Meanwhile, Halo Infinite's competitive multiplayer was already made available to everyone as a free game, and... here too, it feels like a return to its roots, hitting on a spiritual reboot. The developers have thrown all the experiments of the previous The developers have thrown out all the experiments of the previous version - vehicles are not performing well during gameplay but are classically scattered They are classically scattered around the map and whoever reaches them first is the one who benefits. Solutions from Halo 5 were less random and rewarded successful play, but on the other hand... the classic approach probably offers better fun. There is a return of the division into small clashes for 8 players and larger battles for 24 players, and on top of that, we have ranked clashes, where you always start with a specific rifle and there is no there is minimap showing the location of loud players. In all these categories we have different modes - From team deathmatches called here Slayer... Yes, Slayer... ...to stealing flags, occupying points on the map, to...to school, which is a fight to keep an in the hands of the player on the team giving the skull points. The game has new maps itself, but they are often based on ideas from the old installments, so I often had the impression of playing something very familiar - despite the noticeable differences. And it plays great, but it's also very specific. If you've never played Halo's competitive multiplayer, it may surprise you a bit, because the gameplay here is structured completely differently than in most shooters. It is much less important here is much less important who can see who first, and the movement technique is not not only to cover enemies from other sides but also to avoid damage. Halo has a relatively long so-called time-to-kill, which is how long it takes to kill an enemy. The heroes have shields, which have to be taken down, and only then does the damage begin to be proper damage, which can be increased by aiming at the head of an exposed player's head. Elbow of Doom attacks are not enough to kill, but they are They are great as a way to initially take down cover or to finish off an opponent who is already covered. Therefore, a typical two-player clash is not about who shoots first - as in most shooters today - but who will be able to sustain the infliction of damage in time and with his movement make it harder to be wounded. This is where the jumpiness character and the ability to make slides help, and since moving doesn't reduce accuracy, so it pays to be on the move all the time.

It's also one of the few shooters where crossplay is fine because playing on the pad didn't feel at all that I was an inferior player - especially since the mouse may offer more precision in aiming, but a keyboard doesn't give you better control over character movement, which is crucial here. Halo Infinite also takes a very classic approach to the distribution of weapons - everyone starts with the same weapons, different guns are scattered around the map, and extremely powerful tools of murder weapons spawn from time to time in clearly defined and a timer shows when they arrive. And a huge advantage of this game is its readability. Even if we play without voice communication, the characters constantly report the events on the map with short shouts, very very clear visual and audible signals inform about the state of our and enemy shields, inflicting damage with headshots, and the enemies themselves are hard to confuse with allies thanks to the outlines. And it's still great, good old Halo. When it works, because the main problem with this multiplayer is that it's in beta and it feels like it. I have experienced more than once disconnections with servers, problems with connections, and even Once I got banned for a few minutes for ranking games, because I lost connection to the server during the match, and the system thought that I must have left it before time. Additionally, it feels like this multiplayer is very skeletal. It has everything to be fun, but it is just a few modes and maps crossed. For example, there is no Forge, which is known from the previous series. Forge, which would allow you to create your own rules of the game. It's supposed to appear, but only after some time. And when entering the matchmaking we can only choose whether we want to take participate in smaller or bigger games - there is no option to select a game mode, so whether you end up on a server with deathmatches or stealing flags - is not in our control. And the very system of progress and monetization of content is drama. Multiplayer is free, so it's hard to be offended that the game has microtransactions, but... well, Halo Infinite has an extensive customization model for player armor and almost all options are hidden behind payments. Very few cosmetic items can be unlocked for free, and even to those, the path is long, because leveling up here is cruelly slow. The community loudly criticizes this system and the creators have promised to improve it, but what will be the effects and whether they will be satisfactory - it's hard to say. Don't get me wrong - Halo Infinite is a good game, but not as good as it could be. I have a feeling that a lot of truth there was a lot of truth to the reports that it was a labor of love, and the people working on it were saying that things were happening at 343 Industries that things were going on that were similar to what was going on at Bioware during the development of Anthem. Of course, the new Halo is far better than the trainwreck that was Anthem, but nonetheless... Well, it seems that - despite the long production process - the thing is still unfinished. The developers sat on the campaign to the very end, so if you buy the game on the disc you will still You will have to download the whole single-player adventure in a patch. My condolences to players with unhurried connections. I've already mentioned the harshness of the world and it looks like it's a bit like the creators ran out of time for more varied location designs. With the preparation of the, They didn't make it to the premiere either - it's supposed to appear only next year. What follows - there is no There is also no split-screen play - neither in the campaign nor multiplayer. Although split-screen is also announced in the future. The game also recognizes the connection of a second pad. I tried to play the campaign with two pads, I got hit by flashing counts and the game broke my save. The whole Luckily I checked it after finishing the game because I would have been very upset. What's worse, the premiere version has the same error and I also managed to use this method to corrupt the saved game state using this method. Here you can see that the game is counting down to start the save and nothing happens.

Since I managed to step into such a bug, I have concerns about whether this title is well tested because you know that a small number of pre-release reviewers isn't going to find too many problems will find many problems, but when millions of people start playing the game, many things will come out. And, looking around the web, something is already coming out, but hard to judge the extent of the problem yet. At first glance, This is certainly not the case with the positively reviewed Cyberpunk 2077, which, upon release, turned out to look as if someone had detonated a grenade in the testers' department months before the premiere and no new staff was hired, but such an obvious mistake is alarming. Okay, but since I completed the game then, regardless of the save, I should be able to load any mission, right? Well, no. The game has an open world, a more open structure and for the first time in the history of the series, there is no possibility to choose missions or even repeat them. This is kind of weak because there are returning skulls that allow you to modify the rules of the game, and here choosing missions would make sense, but there isn't one. I also already mentioned the lack of a multiplayer Forge allowing you to create your game modes - that will also be coming in the future. So maybe the whole game needed to be released in the future? Fortunately, there is already a cinematic mode in the game that allows you to watch replays of multiplayer matches, rewind, use different shots, and so on. Although I do remember that Halo 3 also had a cinematic mode in the campaign - no mention of that here. Ah, that's right, Halo 3. ever made. A game that the later Halo games should match. Production, which contained all of the above elements on the day of release. Split screen, co-op, Forge, or cinematic mode in the campaign. It's hard to find better evidence that Halo Infinite is a bit... infinite. But despite the obvious effects of the problematic process of the game's development process - it's still a successful production because while there are some shortcomings, the thing doesn't seem to be broken technically broken, and the creators have managed to get what was important - which is something that a surprisingly large number of major studios in recent times. Here's the whole Halo Infinite. A great, nostalgic adventure, that takes the best of the first trilogy and builds on it by adding an open world that fits the formula perfectly. I have a feeling that after years of not very interesting Halo 4 and years of less than successful experiments Halo 5 we finally got a game that shows that 343 Industries understood the magic of the original Bungie productions and managed to develop this formula in the right direction. It's just a shame that in the time allotted for production they didn't It's just a shame that in the time allotted for production they weren't able to polish the game even further and deliver all the expected features for launch - which makes the whole thing seem a bit unfinished. Game Pass price allows you to swallow it, because if it was a production for 60-70 bucks from the competition then I would emphasize my objections more clearly. This, unfortunately, shows that Game Pass allows for such a looser approach to game publishing. Well, have a good time flicking through the hills on the Guzzler and shooting colored balls at the monkeys!

ALL IMAGES ARE FROM - https://www.gry-online.pl/gry/halo-infinite/zb53b1